Dune: The Miniseries, Part I

I review the 1984 movie here. 

The first episode raises the question of whether Dune is sci-fi or fantasy. 

The setting is more deliberately sci-fi than in the 1984 movie. Star Trek meets 2001 and Battlestar Galatica and Star Wars: Lots of sliding doors. Lots of chrome. Lots of flat screen computers.

And then the navigator shows up and mysticism enters the picture. 

It's frankly not my style. I prefer Firefly, where the mysticism is part of the universe, not a thing that arrives to force the universe to function. Cowboys in space, not spacemen who turn into cowboys or angels or gods when a deus ex machina is required.

I also didn't remember the navigator. Out of sheer bewilderment, I went back to the book. Does Herbert really go into such detail on the navigators in the first book? 

No--maybe it is mentioned somewhere, but the novel's action skips from Caladan to Dune, which is the kind of writing I like. For all I know, Herbert was criticized for not "showing" the voyage. However, the navigator/spice stuff seems to be a later issue pushed back into the first movie/series.

Alec Newman is closer to the Paul of the book but still too old and still too yuppie belligerent. Interestingly enough, William Hurt as Leto comes closer to what Paul is supposed to be--quiet, thoughtful, careful, calculating. But then prodigies are difficult to sell on screen--and only slightly easier in books. 

Alec Newman's Paul does grow and learn as he begins to come to terms with Arrakis. But I don't find him entirely likable. The death of Leto is shocking, in part because it robs viewers of the best actor and most sympathetic character in the story.

My biggest problem with the first episode, however, is that the palace on Arrakis is kind of nice, all of it, not just the arboretum. 

Now, I do give the miniseries major points for people actually wearing clothes that look comfortable--I've never understood fantasy and sci-fi series that truss up people to the point where, well, they have to keep tugging down their shirt fronts when they get out of a chair--

However, I'm just not sure that Dune is supposed to look comfortable. It is wealth that draws the ruling families to the planet, not a cozy lifestyle. Yet the miniseries conveys no sense of desolation or desperation as Paul begins to realize, even before his father's death, that he can never leave the place. The water shortage is presented as a problem that can be resolved through noblesse oblige, not a condition of hardship that haunts the entire planet.

On the plus side, the Harkonnens are far more intelligible as a ruling family than in the 1984 film.

And the story, as story, works--if one ignores the mysticism (which I mostly do). Overall, the miniseries approach allows the mythos to exist alongside the plot. The pace is superior by far to the 1984 movie. 

Reviews of Parts II and III to come...